Avoiding a Toxic Moment

I’m not saying anything about how absurdly the team is playing. Enough is being said and more is being said than could possibly be of use. I think everybody should calm down. It is April and it is too early to start talking about breaking up the core and how they’re “doing it again.” They’re not doing anything again, yet. And because we’ve been through the last two years and because the eyes of the fanbase are so focused, by the opening of the stadium, on the issue of why we even bother rooting for the Mets, we’re all a bunch of crazy people. This is obvious and this is all I have to say about it. In this abnormal situation, let’s try to create an atmosphere of normalcy so that they can function. Let’s, well, cheer them on.

P.S. Reading The Eddie Kranepool Society and MetsGrrl, I learned about the segregated escalators in the Robinson rotunda (I just bounded up the stairs and I guess I thought that one of the escalators was broken) and the denial of access to the dugout and home plate area in batting practice. I’ll go to Citi Field, I’m sure, at some point on this homestand and I have to check this out. Obviously, the proximity we had to the players during batting practice was one of the most cherished aspects of the Shea experience. This really has to be preserved. It is profoundly wrong to deny this to fans who have always had it. And the idea terrifies me that someone thought it was an acceptable idea to have a Jackie Robinson rotunda at the center of which are two escalators that immediately establish, to anyone entering the building, that in this place there are two separate and unequal categories of fan. I mean, if they want to have a special limited access elevator to the club levels, that’s one thing, but the two escalators are the dominant physical feature of the rotunda. They are the visual entry point to the ballpark. And right now they are saying something, in the Robinson rotunda, that no one could possibly have wanted them to say.